


YO, K2tog (it's like a code)

by lazulisong



Category: Inception
Genre: Gen, Knitting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-03
Updated: 2012-02-03
Packaged: 2017-10-30 13:39:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/332332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazulisong/pseuds/lazulisong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Oh my God,” moans Arthur. “I’ve paid less for Somnacin. Good Somnacin.” A horrible thought strikes him. “How much is the yarn --” </p><p>“I want you to have an unguarded reaction,” Eames tells him, and pulls him up from the floor. </p><p>(They run an extraction on a knitter.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	YO, K2tog (it's like a code)

**Author's Note:**

> So this week was terrible and yesterday, my brain said to me, What if Eames and Arthur ran an extraction on a knitter.
> 
> I just live here, you guys. I know it's short but even I had to admit that fifteen hundred words about Eames conning a knitter was a little ... even for me, and also I have to finish an even more terrible Sherlock fic to hold over Pru's head forever. So here. I hope it cheers someone up, bros.

Eames learns to knit by watching YouTube videos for six hours, intent, and then disappearing into the dreamscape for three or four sessions. Arthur’s not sure how long he takes there. Long enough that when he surfaces, he’s perfect; a new knitter, talented and patient, but not perfect in his technique or his work. Then he gets a Ravelry account -- several of them, Arthur suspects, to set up his identity there -- and begins to post to the same forums that the mark does. _I’m a new knitter just in frm England to the city for a bit for work lol. Is their a good lys in this neighbourhood?_

Amazingly, this works, but apparently yarn people are pathologically friendly and often helpful for no reason that makes sense to normal people. Arthur’s not going to judge, except that he is. He understands the appeal of talking to people who know what you’re talking about, but this instinctive neighborliness, just because you like playing with sticks and strings, makes him wary.

Eames’ main name, the one he talks to the mark with, is ‘paisleyandproud’. Arthur’s conflicted because it is obviously a reference to one of the mark’s favorite movies, and yet it was clearly chosen to make Arthur twitch. Also, for reasons best known to Eames, Arthur has been drawn into the con as Eames’ ambiguous roommate / best friend / boyfriend, emphasis decidedly on the boyfriend. Eames says it’s because the mark socializes with a bunch of hipster queer friendly vegans. Arthur thinks it has more to do with the way Eames enjoys making Arthur yearn unceasingly to punch him in his stupid attractive face.

Arthur doesn’t even like handknits. Mostly they don’t hang right or they’re scarves too thick to fling over his shoulder the way Mal spent two weeks teaching him to do; causal, studied, very French. And mittens, Arthur remembers mittens. There’s nothing to do but glower at them resentfully and lose them as soon as possible, and lie to your mother about it afterward.

“I don’t even like handknits,” he says. “Why can’t you make Ariadne scarves or something?”

“I am making her one,” says Eames patiently, pulling up a design on his tablet. Arthur flicks through it. There’s a chart, and schematics: he approves. It’s very organized. “It doesn’t matter if you like them. It matters that you go to the shop with me and look hunted, and maybe a little fond --”

“I am never fond,” lies Arthur. He gives Eames a cold look, which doesn’t so much roll off Eames’ back as it does not even register. Arthur hates Eames.

“-- and later you go back in, without me, and buy me ten skeins of the yarn I admired, which I actually was admiring on you, and also an obscenely expensive set of knitting needles. It will all be very Gift of the Magi. She will eat it up.”

“When you say obscene,” begins Arthur, leaning back in his chair.

Eames tells him. Arthur loses his balance with a curse. He doesn’t wake up, which means Eames seriously expects him to -- “They’re pieces of metal on a plastic cable!” he says. “What -”

Eames taps into his phone for a second, then crouches beside Arthur and offers it to him. SIGNATURE CLASSIC NEEDLES, Arthur reads, and then his eyes drag unwillingly to the price list.

Eames helps him sit up, and then put his head between his knees, saying things like, “Deep breaths, darling,” and “So you see, paying more for my regard is entirely possible” and “Best tools for the best job, innit.”

“Oh my God,” moans Arthur. “I’ve paid less for Somnacin. _Good_ Somnacin.” A horrible thought strikes him. “How much is the yarn --”

“I want you to have an unguarded reaction,” Eames tells him, and pulls him up from the floor.

-

Eames’ unguarded reaction ends up costing Arthur three hundred and fifty fucking dollars, including ten skeins of Madelinetosh Vintage ‘Earl Grey’ at twenty damn dollars a skein, two German-engineered circular needles at twenty-five dollars each (too expensive to strangle anybody with, he decides sadly), notions, and a pin-striped project bag on sale for the low, low price of twenty-five dollars and the shreds of Arthur’s dignity. Eames can provide his own sharp objects, but Arthur looks at steel steeking scissors and imagines snatching them from Eames’ work bag -- a terrible canvas thing with a ball of yarn and two crossed needles under it, with a logo of KNIT FAST - DYE YOUNG blazoned in blackletter font over it -- and stabbing into his eyes or Eames’ leg.

Which, Arthur reflects bitterly, is only to be expected. Eames kitted himself out online for like, fifty dollars, and waited until Arthur was vulnerable to put soft merino wool against his neck and force him past careless jeweled heaps of wool and cotton and things on the shelves, to the cruel sales staff who see his reaction to it and bring out cashmere-silk blends, making him pet it before he gets a look at the price tag. Not even for Eames’ ‘regard’ is he willing to spend fifty dollars for sixty meters of yarn. Malabrigo and god damn Madelinetosh are bad enough, with their glowing colors named things like Mourning Dove and Bramble and Rosewood and Amber Trinket. Arthur doesn’t really want to knit, or let Eames knit him things, but God, these colors. 

“This is qiviut,” says the rapicious salesgirl, and Arthur breaks and drags Eames out of there before he can touch it. Fucking _musk ox_ , who woke up and thought that was a good idea. It looks like soft dyed clouds in the sample lace square, and Arthur wants it like he wants Dunhill and Dior and the curve of Eames’ smile.

“Jesus,” says Arthur, back at the base, “Jesus fucking Christ, those women are crazy.”

“You paid five hundred dollars for a bottle of scotch,” Ariadne reminds him. “At least with yarn you have something besides an empty bottle afterward.”

 _“Crazy,”_ repeats Arthur firmly, and then, distracted, “What the fuck, when did you get that, what the hell is that,” to Eames.

“The colorway is ‘Edison Light’,” says Eames, pulling balls of oh sweet mother of fuck _safety yellow wool that he paid twenty dollars each for_ out of his awful project bag. “I thought I’d make the sprogs hats.”

“Please,” says Arthur, tilting his head up and staring at the ceiling, “please, Mal, I know you’re listening, please just get someone to strike him dead where he stands. I know you can do it, Mal. Please. For your children.”

Eames just chuckles at him, fond.

-

The thing is. The thing is it isn’t even that terrible, working with Eames in a studio with Ariadne making smart remarks and building models of the yarn shop and the mark’s work place, all test tubes and locked cabinets. It’s certainly not terrible watching Eames’ competent hands move the yarn and the needles - in, around, out, off, over and over again - is soothing when it doesn’t make him stare at Eames’ ridiculous, chavvish tattoos flexing as he moves for hours.

Arthur, alone in the studio, puts his head on the desk and sighs. Eames is out painting where another regular from the shop will see him and support his cover of being a real artist, and Ari’s out probably buying out a bakery. She has the metabolism of a hummingbird.

Well. It doesn’t matter. He needs to go to the knitting store and act like he’s trying to buy a knitter’s affections.

-

Arthur stands at the counter, without Eames, waiting for his credit card to be returned, and the salesgirl smiles at him, soft. “You’re very nice,” she says. “I can totally see why he’d risk the Sweater Curse for you.”

“Sorry?” says Arthur, and then she hands him an ecological paper bag stamped with the shop’s logo in probably fucking soy ink, and turns to the next customer. It’s the mark, of course, who is giving Arthur an equally helplessly charmed look. His cheeks burn. It’s what the wanted but --

When he gets to the bus stop, he looks up ‘sweater curse’ on wikipedia -- if there’s one thing he’s learned, leaning over Eames’ shoulder, it’s that knitters are just the type of OCD creatively minded nutjobs that he, in any other circumstance, would absolutely adore, and they troll Wikipedia and make specialized wikis like it’s an Olympic sport -- and curses out loud.

Arthur misses when they weren’t pretending to be respectable and in love, and he could punch Eames in the face every day and twice on Sundays, if he felt like it. 

_Don’t make me a sweater, for God’s sake,_ he texts.  
 _U havnet gottn me teh ring :(  
You will never get one if I end up with a cabled monstrosity like the one you were looking at last night,_ promises Arthur.  
 _:((((((_

His phone buzzes.

_Dos this mean u want 2 saty w me darling_

Arthur laughs out loud, he can’t help it.

**Author's Note:**

> \- I think it would be fairly easy to set up something like this on Ravelry but I hasten to add I would never do this and I think the wrath of a million knitters with pointy sticks and garottes would fall on your head, plus you would be permabanned, forever. 
> 
> \- If this ends up on Ravelry, please send me a link.
> 
> \- I was trying to think of a reason for them to be even doing this, but a shocking amount of scientists and government people are hardcore knitters.
> 
> \- The store they go into is based on my LYS, Happy Knits in SE Portland. HI GUYS! Prices on Madelinetosh unwittingly provided by ditto on their website. On mature reflection, Eames would totally dig the Earl Grey colorway. Haven’t decided which for Arthur, but it’s definitely a good color for him, so let’s just pretend.
> 
> \- Arthur would probably like Brooklyn Tweed or Stephen West patterns. I know Eames would love Dolores van Hoofen.
> 
> \- Addi needles run anywhere from $15 to $25, and I think higher for the specialty sizes. (I switched to Knit Picks years ago, which make up for the occasional enraging quality issues with the fact that you don’t actually have to sell plasma to afford them.) Signature Needles run from $30odd for a single pair of pins to $40 or more for a circular needle. Yeah. Apparently they come with free orgasms and religious experiences.
> 
> \- I'm told the Edison Light colorway is very popular with bicyclists.


End file.
